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I think so... at least it was in my case. My dad wasn't necessarily absent as my parents are still married, but I was far from "daddy's little girl". To this day we do not have a close relationship and I truly think that I went from one boyfriend to the other when I was a teen because I never had that bond with my dad.

I think in a lot of girls, it does apply. It certainly did for me. My grandfather tried his best to make up for my dead beat sperm donor, but he was away on business quite a bit. It also did not help me that my mother is an alcoholic, who to quote her bff, is the angriest, most selfish, prickly person I know.

I was pretty much raised by my mom. She divorced my Dad when I was 2, and remarried just before I turned 5. At that point in time, we moved across the country, and my stepdad became a truck driver. I saw him for maybe two days out of every month, and saw my Dad for 6 weeks out of the year - and even then was often left to my own devices while he spent time with his lovers or tooled around in his garage.
At the age of 12, had an older male expressed any kind of sexual interest in me, I would have been willing to comply with whatever he wanted. I did go looking, but online where it's easier to lie and there was more anonymity. I was intensely curious and had been buried in books (including a whole bookshelf of my mom's graphic romance novels) my entire life. After reading a particular study/compilation by Freud when I was 13 that dealt with sex and frigidity, I became concerned about my own sexuality or lack thereof. cont

I was rather afraid I would turn out to be frigid, and went quite a bit farther than being interested in just men. I would accept ANY sexual attention, and became bisexual. I left home and became involved with a woman & her husband around the time of my 15th birthday. It didn't end well. After several months of depression I did date other boys my age, whoever showed enough interest. One showed, apparently, a little too much, and I clung, desperately. We got married when I was 17. That didn't last long, either. After 3 miscarriages, we separated and divorced. I spent time alone, and with friends who truly loved me. With the help of my friends, I formed some self confidence and was able to be alone, and then to form more normal relationships. I'm still rather needy, but it's not as bad as it used to be.
So yes, in my case, I would say the absence of a father figure caused me to crave any attention available.